Book time yet again. Is the world ready for a bunch of Whidbey books?
Well, I'm on to my third book before my second book is even published. And based on the time-frame for this third book, it looks like it will actually be my second, with the second becoming the third at some later date. So it is time to ask. Is the world ready for a bunch of Whidbey books? Heck Whidbey hasn't truely reached a point where you can code production level applications on it. You can start creating best practices for the platform because it isn't nearly defined to a complete level. And you really can't start doing any performance work since that won't be complete until at least the first release candidate.
I'll definitely be going ahead with this latest concept for a book and should have something out the door soon enough (strict publishing deadlines). I've gotten to examine some other books hitting the market on Whidbey as well, also under tight deadlines it appears. With so much rush to get out solid materials on the next and greatest version of the .NET Framework, how many people are going to start transitioning their knowledge to Whidbey rather than improving their skills on the existing platforms?
With much regret and a bit of dismay, I forge on. Time to immerse myself into a new platform, with new APIs, new performance characteristics, and yet again place myself behind the closed door of an NDA. Obviously when the book comes out, all of the cool stuff I'll be working on gets to go public. But until then the community will suffer ever so slightly as they miss out on good solid examinations of the current platform. Rather than getting my expertise in producing the systems of today, you'll wind up with nothing more than a technical viewport into the systems of tomorrow.